Reviewing and discussing books (mostly YA and children's), reading and writing from the perspective of a secondary English teacher, research student and writer. My research is on reading, YA and diversity, so I'm sure that will be reflected here too.

I am very excited to be hosting this guest post as part of Keris’s blogtour. Her new novel, Emma Hearts LA is just out and I strongly recommend it. Without further ado, here’s what Keris has to say:

A few years ago, I read a book called Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume, which features an essay by Lara M Zeises called The M Word. The essay begins with Zeises, age 7, discovering that touching herself feels good, “sometimes good enough to help me fall asleep”, and how she didn’t know what she was doing until she read a Judy Blume novel, Deenie.

Zeises went on to say that “relatively precious few novels even allude to girls getting their groove on by themselves” adding that one notable exception is Meg Cabot’s All-American Girl: Ready or Not.

Deenie was published in 1973. Ready or Not was published in 2006. I was astonished that female masturbation was still considered such a taboo subject, more than 30 years later. And so I decided I had to mention it in my first novel, Della Says: OMG!

It did actually fit the plot: Della’s diary is stolen and someone starts circulating the most embarrassing bits and, as a teenager, I couldn’t have imagined anything more embarrassing than people knowing I masturbated. Which is precisely why it needs to be addressed in more YA fiction. (A friend told me about a recent YA novel in which the main character complains that her aunt comes into her bedroom without knocking and says, “What if she caught me smoking? Or undressing? Or, like, masturbating or something? Not that I really do that, ever – but it’s the principle of the thing.” Fine, that particular character may not masturbate – though I’d be very surprised – but if I’d read that as a teen, I would have been mortified.)

And so I am collecting a “female fiction fiddling” list. If you know of any other books that should be on here, I’d be delighted to hear about them.

NB: May contain spoilers, so proceed with caution!

Deenie by Judy Blume (pub. 1973)

Deenie touches her “special place” when she has trouble falling asleep and asks a teacher, in an anonymous note, “Do normal people touch their bodies before they go to sleep and is it all right to do that?” The teacher explains that, yes, masturbation is “normal and harmless”.

All-American Girl: Ready or Not by Meg Cabot (pub. 2006)

Sam’s sister tells her she practices making love by herself. In the bath.

“Look, it’s easy. Get in the bathtub. Turn the water on. Scoot down to the end of the tub, until your you-know-what is under the running water. Then pretend the water is the guy, and let it–”

“OH MY GOD.”

This leads to an extended discussion of why girls should do it (“Come on, Sam. You can’t expect a guy to know what to do to make you have an orgasm. You have to do it yourself. At least until you can teach him how.”) which is both feminist and very funny.

Pop! by Aury Wallington (pub. 2006)

I think I must have loaned my copy of Pop! to someone, but I’m pretty sure that, like Sam above, Marit treats herself to a romantic moment with her bath tap. (Is it just me or does that sound incredibly uncomfortable?)

Leader of the Pack by Kate Cann (pub. 2008)

Leader of the Pack is a perfect example of how we’re much more open about/comfortable with/used to the idea of male masturbation (it’s never even usually referred to as “male masturbation”, is it? There’s “masturbation” and “female masturbation”). Gem is alone in bed…

“She started moving her hands on her thighs, rocking herself. She thought… If you feel this turned on right now at the start, how’s it gonna be when… Her hands moved higher. She was thinking of the amazing kiss they’d had…”

The next paragraph begins “Over in his bedroom, Jack had been masturbating too, highly pleasurably.” If it hadn’t been for that, I might have actually missed that that’s what Gem was doing.

Della Says: OMG! by Keris Stainton (i.e. me) (pub. 2010)

A page of Della’s diary is scanned in and sent to her on Facebook. It reads: “But since he’s not interested in me and nothing’s ever going to happen between us, I’ll have to make do with the next best thing: touching myself and pretending it’s him.”

Della’s embarrassed, but her more experienced friend Maddy tells her she needn’t be, that it’s perfectly natural and everyone does it.

Forget You by Jennifer Echols (pub. 2010)

Zoey is in the bath, trying to work out whether or not she had sex the previous night. ‘Testing for tenderness gave way to making myself feel better. It helped with my headache.’ This is another one where I could quite easily have missed what she was doing.

Adorkable by Sarra Manning (pub. 2012)

After Jeane and Michael have had sex for the first time, Jeane tells him not to worry about the fact that she didn’t orgasm.

‘”I was close and then I wasn’t. It happens. It’s not, like, an exact science. Like, sometimes when I’m doing it to myself, my timing goes all wrong.”

“It does?” I managed to spit out, because my mind had just gone into a tailspin at Jeane’s casual reference to the fact that she masturbated. I mean, I know that some girls do, but generally they don’t talk about it.’

Thank you so much Keris. It’s amazing to think that there are so few references that it’s even possible to compile a list. Any more recommendations, anyone?

Teaching diaries unit to Year 7s this week. Copied several pages of Anne Frank’s diary to read out and, guess what Anne was writing about? As my students were year 7s, I changed to another set of entries, but I found this particular passage so honest and, well, touching!

Isn’t it though? It does seem to be mentioned more in popular culture in general (there were jokes in Friends, Will & Grace and Gavin & Stacey, off the top of my head), but still nowhere near as openly as male masturbation.

I read the All American Girl books years ago but I never realised that it was referenced at all until I read this.

I also think I have a book to add to the list; it’s not a contemp though: Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready has a pretty steamy scene where Aura’s ghost boyfriend whispers to her while she takes care of herself.

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